Search results for ""Wellstone Books""

Bruce Jenkins was twelve years old, living in Malibu with his parents, when he heard the original "Shop Around" single, by "The Miracles featuring Bill 'Smokey' Robinson," the first Billboard No. 1 R&B single for Motown's Tamla label. Released nationally in October 1960, the single would ultimately make it into the Grammy Hall of Fame, but for young Bruce, the first times he heard the song were a revelation. Jenkins grew up surrounded by music. His father, Gordon Jenkins, was a composer and arranger who worked with artists from Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday to Louis Armstrong and Johnny Cash, but was best known for his close collaboration with Frank Sinatra. His mother, Beverly, was a singer. For Bruce, "Shop Around" ushered him into a new world of loving Motown. In Shop Around, he brings to life the first thrill of having the music claim him, provides the back story of the recording (and rerecording) of the hit single, shares sketches from his life with his father and mother, and traces how his love of music has grown and evolved over the years and how he still loves driving around San Francisco with Motown cranked up on his car stereo.

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For his eighteenth birthday, Dusty Baker's parents gave him a great present: Two tickets to the Monterey Pop Festival of June 1967, a three-day event featuring more than thirty bands, and use of the family station wagon for the weekend so young Dusty could drive down from Sacramento to the Monterey Bay Area. He was another young person, trying to take it all in, sleeping on the beach with his buddy, having the time of his life soaking up the vibe and every different musical style represented there. Baker's lifelong love of music was set in motion, his wide-ranging, eclectic tastes, everything from country to hip-hop. He also caught the Jimi Hendrix Experience, who put on such a show that to this day Baker calls Hendrix the most exciting performer he's ever seen. He went on to years of friendship with musicians from B.B. King and John Lee Hooker to Elvin Bishop. This account grabs a reader from page one and never lets up.

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Pedro Gomez of ESPN was a beloved figure in baseball. His death from sudden cardiac arrest on Feb. 7, 2021, unleashed an outpouring of heartfelt tributes. He was 58, both a hard-nosed reporter and a smiling ambassador of the sport. These 62 personal essays soar beyond sports to delve into life lessons. Pedro, a proud Cuban American, was known for his dramatic reporting from Havana. Fully and fluidly bilingual, he did as much as anyone to bridge the wide gap that had existed between U.S.-born players and the Latin Americans now so important to the game’s vitality and future growth. He was also a family man who loved to talk about his three children, Sierra, Dante and Rio, a Boston Red Sox prospect. Pedro was universally known as a smiling presence who brought out the best in people. His humanity and generosity of spirit shaped countless lives, including one of his ESPN bosses, Rob King, who was so moved by Pedro’s advice to him—“Remember who you are”—that he printed up the words and posted them on the wall of his office in Bristol. King is one of a diverse collection of contributors whose personal essays turn Pedro’s shocking death into an occasion to reflect on the deeper truths of life we too often overlook. Part The Pride of Havana and part Tuesdays With Morrie, part The Tender Bar and part Ball Four, this is the rare essay collection that reads like a novel, full of achingly honest emotion and painful insights, a book about friendship, a book about standing for something, a book about joy and love. Former New York Times writer Jack Curry writes about Pedro’s passion for live music, and former Sports Illustrated writer Tim Kurkjian brings alive spring-training basketball games with executives like Sandy Anderson and Billy Beane and Pedro right in the mix. Detroit manager AJ Hinch and formers Texas manager Ron Washington both reveal that in their darkest hours Pedro gave them some of the best advice of their lives. Hall of Famers Dennis Eckersley, Tony La Russa, Peter Gammons, Ross Newhan, Tracy Ringolsby and Dan Shaughnessy are among the contributors. So are likely future Hall of Famers Max Scherzer and Dusty Baker. Pulitzer-Prize-winning Washington Post war correspondent Steve Fainaru, award-winning writers from Howard Bryant and Mike Barnicle to Tim Keown, Ken Rosenthal and Dave Sheinin also contribute. Rounding out the mix are current and former ESPN stars including Rachel Nichols, Shelley M. Smith, Peter Gammons, Bob Ley and Keith Olbermann. This is a book to rekindle in any lapsed fan a love of going to the ballpark, but it’s also a wakeup call that transcends sports. To any journalist, worn down by the demands of a punishing job, to anyone anywhere, pummeled by pandemic times and the dark mood of the country in recent years, these essays will light a spark to seize every opportunity to make a difference, in your work and in the lives of people who matter to you.

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Google massage therapist Grace Ku believes that through massage we can all learn to communicate better with one another, and of course also learn to move deeper into dialogue with our own bodies. We can help each other to fend off the warping influence of stress, worry and fear, limit technological overreach into our psyches, and bring joyousness into our days. Fifteen years ago Grace spent long hours hunched over a computer monitor, like so many others in Silicon Valley, and ended up with more than her share of neck, eye, back and shoulder pain. She thought this was how life was supposed to be. Then she had an awakening and a shift in perspective that showed her life could be different: She could be relaxed, at peace with herself and comfortable in her own body, and she could work as a massage therapist to bring balance and contentment to others. Now in her first book, she pulls together lessons learned in her years of work as a Google massage therapist. This is a book, full of Grace's beautiful artwork, that can help couples come together, not only through healing touch, but also through better communication and more balanced living.

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This daring volume combines the best of writing on running with the appeal of the best literary writing, essays that take in the sights and sounds and smells of real life, of real risk, of real pain and of real elation. Emphasizing female voices, this collection of eleven personal essays set in different countries around the world offers a deep but accessible look at the power of running in our lives to make us feel more and to see ourselves in a new light. From acclaimed novelist Emily Mitchell and Portland attorney Anne Milligan to author Vanessa Runs and ESPN reporter Bonnie Ford, a diverse lineup of writers captures a variety of perspectives on running at night. These are stories that can inspire people of all ages and backgrounds to take on a thrilling new challenge. The contributors all have distinct tales to tell, but each brings a freshness and depth to their experiences that make Night Running a necessary part of every runner's library - and a valuable addition to the reading lists of all thoughtful readers.

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Part standup comedy, part painfully revealing self-exploration, this is a tender, heartbreaking, hilarious book of poems about the male condition in the 21st Century. These are poems to read and reread and then to read aloud to friends. Even nonplussed strangers will smile knowingly after being ushered into Pete McLaughlin’s world, laughing at his manic, self-deprecating take on the grim horror of waking up to find yourself a divorced middle-aged dude living by yourself with a cat, one given to fits of projectile vomiting. The poems range from a riff on the yearning of an “Angry Prius” who just wants to get out in the fast lane, one time, and drive all-out “mercilessly tailgating all comers,/ even senior citizens,” to the revelations of “Middle Age,” about being picked up by a woman in her sixties who “plays teasing, exploratory footsie beneath the tablecloth/her unblinking green-light eyes/locked mercilessly onto mine/she winks knowingly, her big toe somehow in my pocket now.”

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Like Viet Thanh Nguyen's acclaimed The Sympathizer, VietnamEazy captures with startling honesty and detail the dizzying dislocation that so many Vietnamese arrivals in the United States have experienced and, like Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club, explores the age-old mysteries of the mother-daughter relationship. It tells the story of Kieu, a Vietnamese-American woman, and her quest for success on a TV cooking show, introducing the intoxicating allure of Vietnamese food to a general audience, interwoven with the haunting, sorrowful tale of her family and upbringing. This is a universal tale of redemption that mothers and daughters can read together and discuss, preferably over a steaming bowl of pho.

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On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Bookshop Santa Cruz, widely seen as one of the most vibrant and community-friendly independent bookstores in the nation, Northern California author Wallace Baine checks in with a passionate, personal story of books and the power they have to transform our lives.In bringing alive the remarkable tale of Neal Coonerty and his wife Candy – and ultimately, their daughter Casey – taking over Bookshop and nurturing it and the community it supports over the decades, Baine helps readers fall in love all over again not just with books, but their local bookshop. Far from declining, Bookshop Santa Cruz is more dynamic all the time, the kind of community center that inspires and nourishes writers like Karen Jay Folwer and Jonathan Franzen.

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Walking can do anyone good -- and Bruce Bochy knows that as well as anyone. As a Major League manager, he has one of the more stressful jobs imaginable. So what does he do to relax? He goes for long walks. Whenever possible, he takes long walks as a way to clear his head, calm his soul and give his body a workout. In this charming little volume, he shares his thoughts on walking in terms that can inspire everyone to get out more often for a good walk, a great way to stay fit and healthy through the forties and fifties and beyond. Along the way he provides glimpses into his life and character that will delight his many fans.

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When the networks called the 2020 presidential election for Joe Biden on Saturday, November 7, 2020, people from coast to coast exhaled—and danced in the streets. This quick-turnaround volume, a collection of 38 personal essays from writers all over the country—“many of America’s most thoughtful voices,” as Jon Meacham puts it—captures the week Trump was voted out, a unique juncture in American life, and helps point toward a way forward to a nation less divided. An eclectic lineup of contributors—from Rosanna Arquette, Susan Bro and General Wesley Clark to Keith Olbermann, Stewart O'Nan and Anthony Scaramucci—puts a year of transition into perspective, and summons the anxieties and hopes so many have for better times ahead. As award-winning columnist Mary C. Curtis writes in the lead essay, “Saying you’re not interested in politics is dangerous because, like it or not, politics is interested in you.” Novelist Christopher Buckley, a former speechwriter for Vice President George H.W. Bush, laments, “The Republican Senate, with one exception, has become a stay of ovine, lickspittle quislings, degenerate descendants of such giants as Everett Dirksen, Barry Goldwater, Howard Baker and John McCain.” Nero Award-winning mystery novelist Stephen Mack Jones writes, to Donald Trump, “Remember: You live in my house. 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is my house. My ancestors built it at a cost of blood, soul and labor. I pay my taxes every year to feed you, clothe you and your family and staff and fly you around the country and the world in my tricked-out private jet. If you violate any aspect of your four-year lease—any aspect—Lord Jesus so help me, I will do everything in my power to kick yo narrow ass to the curb.” As Publisher Steve Kettmann writes in the Introduction: “The hope is that in putting out these glimpses so quickly, giving them an immediacy unusual in book publishing, we can help in the mourning for all that has been lost, help in the healing (of ourselves and of our country), and help in the pained effort, like moving limbs that have gone numb from inactivity, to give new life to our democracy. We stared into the abyss, tottered on the edge, and a record-setting surge of voting and activism delivered us from the very real threat of plunging into autocracy.”

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